Composition Tip: Give Your Subjects Breathing Space

Composition, in general, can seem like a fuzzy concept to many photographers. Trying to frame an image in a way that “works” is not something that is intuitive, even for people who have been taking pictures for years. And, unlike other aspects of photography — focusing, selecting a sharp aperture, exposing properly — composition has no correct answer. The best you can do is to create something that looks good to you, or looks good to your intended audience. Still, there are some composition tips that can help make this abstract topic a little more concrete. One of my favorites is to give your subjects their own personal, breathing space in your photos, so that they aren’t cut off or bunched up against anything else in the image.

1) Keep The Edges Clear

Ideally, every important element in a photograph should be positioned far enough away from the photo’s edges that it is not distracting.

If you keep the edges of your photo clear, it’s as though you are creating a built-in frame for a photograph. Essentially, you’re drawing a viewer into the image.

NIKON D800E + 70-200mm f/4 @ 200mm, ISO 100, 1/160, f/9.0

It is easy to overlook the edges of your composition. They are the parts of an image that typically attract the least attention. But that is precisely why they matter; if they do attract attention, unless you have a good reason for it, they can lead to photographs that look distracting, messy, and unintentional. The first thing I pay attention to when composing a photograph is the way its frame looks.

NIKON D800E + 105mm f/2.8 @ 105mm, ISO 100, 1/13, f/7.1(In this case, there isn’t nearly enough breathing space at the top of the composition. The image clearly suffers as a result.)

It won’t always be possible to compose a photograph in a way that leaves a perfect buffer around all its edges. And if you have minor elements that bump up against the frame, so be it. An image doesn’t need to have a dark, featureless border in order to avoid distracting your viewer. But the fewer elements that appear at the edges — particularly the most important elements of a photograph — the more intentional that your composition will tend to look.

2) Don’t Interfere With Your Subject

Even worse than crowding the edges is if you block a significant portion of your primary subject with elements that are far less important.

What do I mean by this? Say that you’re photographing the reflection of a mountain in a pristine lake. However, depending upon your angle, parts of the lake shore might be too close to the reflection — or even block parts of it completely. Take a look at the photograph below for a particularly bad example:

NIKON D800E + 20mm f/1.8 @ 20mm, ISO 220, 1/40, f/9.0(This is a beautiful landscape, but the photo itself has a bad composition, which makes it ineffective. One of the main issues is that the foreground interferes too much with the reflection of the mountain.)

There are a number of problems with this photo. Not only is the reflection particularly bad, but other elements of the photograph (say, the moon at the top) are cut off awkwardly by the edge of the frame. The end result is a composition that looks haphazard and accidental.

How would I fix this problem? The simple solution is to move my camera to a position that gives each subject its own breathing space. I don’t want anything to interfere with this mountain’s reflection, and I want to ensure that the moon is nowhere near the top of the photograph. Here is the corrected version:

NIKON D800E + 20mm f/1.8 @ 20mm, ISO 100, 1/25, f/11.0

That’s a clear difference. This photograph looks far more deliberate, as if it has a reason to exist.

When you frame an image, you should do so with the intent to provide breathing space for all of your subjects. If they are cut off or blocked by anything else in your photo, the final image will be too chaotic.

3) Conclusion

Breathing space — between your subject and the edges, as well as multiple subjects — is one of the fundamental parts of composition. Alone, it isn’t enough to guarantee a successful photograph. But if you don’t give your subjects the space they deserve, it is hard to argue that your composition is as effective as possible.

This isn’t a difficult concept, but it is one of the more common reasons why I see some good photographers take bad photos in the field. And that’s simply because, by default, your first view of a scene might not be one with the most breathing space for your subjects. This is the type of thing that takes conscious effort to correct in the field; if you don’t keep it in mind, it is very easy to end up with suboptimal compositions.

When you capture an image, the two words stuck in your head should be deliberate and conscious. Every single part of your photograph should exist intentionally; nothing should be accidental. An image with good subject separation is one of the main steps toward that goal.

NIKON D800E + 70-200mm f/4 @ 175mm, ISO 200, 1/25, f/5.6

Composition is one area where a huge number of photographers — including many who are very, very talented — still struggle. It’s just not an especially tangible topic, and most attempts to explain it (i.e., the rule of thirds, leading lines), don’t go nearly far enough. There’s no perfect answer here, but you can dive much deeper into this subject than the average article or book tends to go. Specifically, if this happens to be a topic that interests you, I strongly recommend our eBook, “Creative Landscape Photography: Light, Vision, and Composition.” (That’s where the breathing space tips in this article come from.) Frankly, it’s true that eBooks in general don’t have a very good reputation. But my hope is that you’ll give this one a chance and see what it has to offer, since all the information in it is designed specifically to be as accurate and tangible as possible, in a field where accurate and tangible tips can be difficult to find.

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About Spencer Cox

Spencer Cox is a landscape photographer and writer who spends his free time… taking landscape photos and writing. It works out well. His photos have gained international recognition and awards, and his work has been displayed worldwide, including at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. To contact Spencer directly or view more of his work, visit his website at Spencer Cox Photography. Or, follow him on Facebook and 500px.

Reader Interactions

Comments

1) Daniel

July 21, 2017 at 2:32 am

Many casual photographers tend to clutter pictures with too much context and a small main subject. After they’ve learned to avoid that, they may do the opposite mistake, fill too much of the frame with the main subject (at least I did and sometimes still do that). So: Great and helpful article, with great examples, thanks!

Thank you, Daniel! Good points — people do end up refining their style of composition over time, but it can be difficult to kill bad habits that started early. For me, in some landscapes (particularly overlooks), I default to excluding as much of the foreground as possible. I’m trying to pay close attention to this tendency, since it works for some landscapes and not for others.

Great tips, Spencer. I appreciate examples showing what to avoid. It really helps to outline the concept to many that are new or unaware of it. I remember playing with IR film in high school and learning this lesson the hard way. To think, it’s amazing how some shots can be muddled (I don’t want to say ruined) when they are only a little out of composure.

Thanks! Yes, it is amazing how drastically a slight change in position can improve or harm a photograph. The real thing that I like to keep in mind is whether each object in the photo adds to the overall appearance of the image — if every element is as optimal as possible. But this is such a subjective thing that there is no perfect way to know if a particular photo succeeds or fails at this goal!

Great tip, however I have often read that a”tog” should fill the frame. Perhaps it should be mentioned the type of photograph we attempting to capture. I am not sure your tip is the best idea for head shots, portrait or studio art nude work. For landscape or even wildlife your ideas are superb and will certainly influence my photography from now on. Thank you for sharing…very helpful article…!!!!

Good points! I only really shoot landscape and nature photos, so this article is written with that type of subject in mind. I am not necessarily a good person to speak about composition in other genres, but I’ve thought about it some, and I have come to a few possible answers. First, in portrait photography, the subject does not necessarily have to be the entire person, or even all of the person’s head. In many cases, their face is the most important part of the image, and other parts of their body might be excluded from the image without making the photo look distracting. But this is a more advanced style of composition that should be done carefully; after all, it is easy enough to crop the photo in a way that looks awkward or unnatural. As Betty says in a comment below, this type of composition can be successful when done intentionally, but sloppy when done without thinking.

Spencer’s good advice is general advice and applies universally. There will of course always be exceptions, but beginners would do well to follow well established guidelines before deciding they are the next Maisel, Newton or McCurry and start lopping off limbs, blurring their subjects or skewing horizons.

That is a very good point! As I mentioned to Winston in a comment above, part of the reason you might crop off the top of a person’s head in portrait photography is because their face is the true subject — or just their eyes, or just their lips, and so on.

I also think that we are very used to seeing photos of people, so we have an inherent familiarity with the subject. It isn’t as disconcerting to see an “odd” composition of a person, cropped to exclude various features of their body, because we know how they are meant to look. But this is definitely something to think about.

Thanks for this article. It has helped me pull together an assortment of ideas about why I find some images more compelling than others. Your earlier article about the benefits of keeping things simple was helpful, but this one really hit the spot for me.

Great tip on edges that I will now be more aware of in my shots. tks so much. Drawing the eye into the picture gets difficult with various types of subjects-therein lies the challenge for us. These are great tips to keep in mind.

An interesting article, but I think you lost a great shot with the example of the mountain scene.

The second image is a dime a dozen shot, no different to a million other photos showing a reflection of mountains on some lake. This has become a cliché type of shot and who likes clichés?

The first example I feel is much better, were it approached slightly differently. I would have gone low to the ground, hopefully removing the reflection, so that the moss, water plants and water gave a lead-in to the mountains in the background. The expansive low, flat, foreground would have added a foil and balance to the tall, heavy mountains in the background. It would have become a photo with some asymmetry.

I would then have waited for the light to give the golden glow in the second image, which gives the second image an unfair advantage, and lightened the foreground shadows to add to that balance against the mountains.

Interesting points! I could see a very successful photo exactly how you describe — with the foreground of the first taking up a more prominent position. And yes, the light in the second photo certainly gives it an advantage.

Great article. It is another example of the wisdom of making your decisions thoughtfully. I am encouraged to do more Landscape photography – which is what I need. I especially appreciate your use of colour. Recently, I have been put off landscape photography because of the huge number of GOSLI I see posted on photography sites and for sale (Grosely Over Saturated Landscape Images). They all look like postcards. Rather than enhancing our appreciation of the subject, they seek to idealise and “perfect” the natural word into an impossible and unrealistic version, and somehow it diminishes the landscapes shown. I shall use try to think about the breathing space in the composition. I understand the temptation to boost the saturation a little bit, but not the desire to make every image into a cliché.

About any of Spencer’s article, I do always like the simple way he uses to compare and bring out the better. An important subject, and a very brief and sweet contents…for amateurs like me it always helps to read more and more on a particular subject. So I thought this article abruptly ended. Again thanks for the article!

Great timing on this article. I am still editing photos from our first trip to Iceland last month. ( I could write a blog on the lessons learned from this trip from avoiding the selfie hordes to protecting your lens from volcanic dust) There is definitely a tendency to stuff your viewfinder with the incredible vistas. I had to catch myself several times trying to show too much. Even then, I produced some examples of poor composition like you have above. I have started to make it more of a practice to not only review the histogram of each photo, but the composition on the view screen as well. Sometimes you get too caught up in the technical aspects of taking the photo once you think it is composed and focused. If I think I may have missed the composition or there could be a better angle or vantage point, I can make corrections and shoot again.

Good article that is common sense but often forgotten. I’d add another tip if I may. If you can, take a few pics at slightly different zooms. Taste vary with age and time. That breathing space is one of the changing factor. Also, don’t hesitate to shoot a bit zoomed out in case you are not sure and if you can’t take many pics. A bit of cropping wouldn’t impact much the picture but missing some elements would definitely be regretted.

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